one last hurrah for cia whistle blower john kiriakou soon to be in prison for leaking government information kiriakou friends say and supporters honor his commitment to telling the truth and speak about the future of whistleblowers in the u.s. coming up we'll share what happened at this somber celebration. to hold your money . she may be homeless but she's taking her fight straight to the bank and she's not alone four years after the too big to fail bank bailouts these protesters want you to know what bank of america is up to. and it's in that in an ironic twist the white house is welcoming tech savvy americans at its first ever happened on this as political activist and hacker jeremy hammond fights his case against the government behind bars.

it's friday february twenty second i'm mega lopez here in washington d.c. and you're watching our teeth as regular t.v. viewers know cia was of lower john kiriakou was sentenced to thirty months in prison for leaking information about waterboarding and systematic cia torture to the media however last night he couldn't have been further from the jail cell supporters held a sendoff banquet just one week before he is expected to head to prison human rights activists journalists family and friends attended the event but it wasn't all dancing and dining at his prison sentence as his prison sentence loomed the producer rachel courteous was at last night's event and joined us earlier to talk about it i asked her the one question that is on everyone's minds what happened last night. it was a very tense affair in many ways because well it was in probably one of the ritziest places in d.c.

that's called the hay adams hotel and it overlooks the white house we were in kind of this penthouse suite in in the sense it was it was very clear that it was called an orange ball so that meant a lot of people were say wearing jumpsuits with bow ties underneath so kind of the tension of of the fanciness as well as the prison sentence that loomed was i they chose this this place to hold the event because you had a great view of the white house and of the washington monument in the idea was to look down on the torturers have a moment when they were kind of on top when these activists had an opportunity to look down instead of say look behind bars now john kerry for many years works for the cia and beyond that he he also was the one to leak these cia torture tactics what are his a thought study talk about some of the agency now and where it's headed yes he absolutely did in some remarks he said that in some ways he still loved the cia and the promise that it could potentially hold for you know american for making america

a better and more free place as well as the rest of the world but what he also said was he was incredibly concerned with the way the cia was being managed and in particular he brought up cia nominee for director john brennan who has been a part of the security apparatus for quite a long time and i was hoping we could take a listen to what he said about john brennan. i've known john brennan for a long time and for twenty two years i worked directly for him. i think he's a terrible choice to be cia director. yes so essentially he's saying that this is a man who has overseen a lot of killing a lot of essentially throwing out of the constitution and then he thought of the cia it was going to be. an organization that he could envision being better it wouldn't be that way if john brennan were at the head of it now he is about to head to prison for quite a amount of time two years is definitely not a small sentence leaving his five children behind does he have any regrets about this whole matter sure i think that it's it was very clear in speaking with him

that he's going to miss his family certainly he's hoping that once he leaves prison he'll be able to provide for them in a way that he won't be when he's behind bars but he also seemed very steadfast in his actions in terms of having a regret about whistle blowing itself he he didn't really and he spoke about that as well with us if we'd like to take a listen. i see parallels with the one nine hundred fifty s. with the mccarthy era i really do. you know with fifty years of hindsight or fifty plus years i'd say we realize how utterly wrong those people were i know in my heart that years from now people are going to look back and they're going to know that we were on the right side of history we were the ones who were right the government was wrong. yes so he's hoping that in the end history will come to vindicate him and his actions despite spending these next thirty months behind bars now there is a lot of people at last night's event can you talk about the future of whistleblowers

i know thomas drake was there is it is it a bleak future for whistle blowers at this point yes certainly so as a bit of background john kiriakou was the sixth person in the obama administration who's been prosecuted under the espionage act which was created during world war one and its ties to current will still glowing orbitz p.c.'s especially. according to a lot of lawyers who were at last night's event and thomas drake was was the first of these people prosecuted under the under the espionage act and he talked to us a little bit about what that was like and just as background he was part of the national security agency and he broke essentially the story or leak the press leak to the press all of the warrantless wiretapping going on and he had something to say about what he thought the future was going to be like for whistleblowers no indication that they're letting up i mean it's pretty clear that right now they're going to wiki leaks look at all possible legal you see there. you're still others i mean there's major investigation you realise major investigations going on. in

other government agencies if you chose leaks. so the lesson there in the lesson both from mr drake mr coo and other guests at the event last night was listen he's going to be in jail for thirty months don't forget about him and don't forget about the larger issues he stood for both sent him letters but also trying to keep that fight for government transparency and accountability alive and well very interesting thank you so much for attending that event bringing us this report back our to producer rachel kirsten yes thanks for having me. well it's a promise we've heard president obama reiterate time and again since two thousand and nine from campaign speeches to the state of the union address and white house weekly addresses and even town halls no more taxpayer bailouts never again will taxpayers be on the hook because a financial company is deemed too big to fail but never say never it appears that bank bailouts can and do still happen just in the form of covert backdoor deals

here's what we found out last week the new york fed said in a court filing that in july it had released bank of america from all legal claims arising from losses in some mortgage backed securities the fed received when the government bailed out the american international group in two thousand and eight so essentially mortgage lender agee was attempting to sue bank of america for billions upon billions of dollars for selling them toxic assets but the fed got in the way and not only is the fed telling a.i.g. it can't sue it's also refusing to sue the mega bank itself so if an institution as big as a i.g. isn't powerful enough to take on the bank of america what hope is there for average americans getting the in trying to get the restitution that they desire r t correspondent ramon galindo brings us this tragic story of one woman who lost everything except for her will to fight.

foreclosed home owners in los angeles are calling our wall street giant bank of america this is ridiculous i mean how greedy can people be among them is single mom sold out of corona i've spent over forty thousand dollars trying to get by on that and that's all we want it's just simply our mortgage after negotiation in terms of beauty krone says the bank held her payment sending her into default occupy activists tried to keep her in her home but grown and her daughter were eventually a victim and that's what they do they create blight in communities it's sad it's it's tragic actually. then i haven't lived i don't see. her breaking families so they throw you to the street they hold your money they like two years after the mortgage meltdown mainstream america still feeling the

brunt of the crisis wall street executives have been able to avoid prosecution through a series of fraud settlements be they and other big banks have agreed to pay billions of dollars for their financial schemes but deals with the feds have bailed out bank of america from having to pay billions more in legal claims and back america has paid lots and lots of money out but it is really a pittance of what they gained throughout the financial bubble that was that was built up in the housing market regulators have been criticized for putting more priority on keeping banks afloat than on the rule of law he is can you identify when you last took the wall street banks to trial. i will have to get back to you with the specific information but we do litigate they have not been held to account and they continue many of the same practices and are just as big as not bigger than they were before the foreclosure rate has decreased since the peak of the crisis but there were still more than

a million homes that bill into foreclosure in two thousand and twelve thank you. very. well bonuses on wall street continue to grow so does the heartache of america's foreclosed families we don't want anything free we just want our homes and to continue paying our mortgage broker. in los angeles remember lindo r t. all right everyone we are team minus six days until the dreaded sequester that is automatic government spending cuts that everyone from economists to politicians have said could cripple the u.s. economy and yet nothing's being done about it for months now we've heard of how cuts like this could be a death blow to the u.s. military but it goes beyond that so let's take a look about how these cuts will affect your life what you're looking at here are just a few of them it will slash some three billion dollars in health care services for

military families the health and human services department says it will also reduce hiv tests for some four hundred thousand people due to funding cuts the t.s.a. will face for low days so that could mean longer security lines for you and that of food and drug administration will experience two hundred six million dollars in cuts so that could affect food regulations on food quality and the list goes on and also affects schools new york schools alone will lose one hundred two point two million dollars in federal aid and to tell me more about how congress could actually let this happen i was joined earlier by our tour of the scada he's an avid advocacy coordinator for the school of americas watch and i first asked him what these cuts to education could mean for our children. some of the cuts that are discussed as you as you just mentioned were for federal schooling and then some of the head start program four hundred million is well suppose the going to be cut but

it pretty much appears almost all of these cuts but it's not going to be so automatically it seems more of a percentage decrease over the next several months for the fiscal year between now between march and and september so for example on some of the head start programs it is more likely that there will be more of maybe an increase in the amount of families would have to pay not necessarily the tens of thousands of children will be cut off of the program. i mean in reality if you like it's just. a lot of fear mongering to to be able to point to these these types of programs that are obviously yes important and needed and there shouldn't be cuts to them but it's more of a hostage situation to really avoid the defense cuts and i think that that's where we should be the focus should be on that that the science has defense budget is bloated and. shouldn't. avoiding cuts there shouldn't. be

so damaging to to other people but i think a lot of the damage can still be avoided either way so potentially avoiding defense cuts that the cost of prosody our future and in our children but i do have to ask you because it seems a little bit hypocritical considering the fact that president obama in this most recent state of the union address talked about early childhood education funding preschool so how can any do that how can we fought to fund these preschools and have more children entering interning and to early childhood education but also to cutting schools. doesn't make much sense for them to use these two specifically to point to these cuts it's completely unnecessary in the sense that. you don't. need to cut these programs it's there a drop in the bucket compared to to the defense budget and. you can look elsewhere or the other major obstacle of course is that the republicans refuse to consider

any spend any tax increases so here we're just talking about cuts and it doesn't make any sense it just shows the power of the defense industry where you're going to to have. we can to the social safety net which we was already weakened and which actually needs to be strengthened these types of programs instead of being cut and which is kind of now congress has painted the entire country into a corner. and we. still need to be looking for four types of alternatives to these automatic cuts and again it really goes back to looking at the defense budget and yet we have both a drawdown going on in afghanistan i know the technology is becoming cheaper because of drones and whatnot and cyber cyber security but also congress has long recess right now they're on vacation and so the last time that we had something

crazy like this happened it was the fiscal cliff and we heard all the rhetoric all the craziness come up at the festival cliff i think congress went and said we went off that fiscal cliff but then they said retroactively we did not go off the fiscal cliff is it possible that we could go to the sequester and then congress decides that we've retroactively didn't go to sequester or is what the damage already done i mean that's exactly what's going to happen. it appears that they're going to they're going to let this happen on march first action appears very likely to actually be taken by congress before then so that the sequester will supposed to kick in but it appears to just be the that will be the jolt to get the congress members to actually work towards something and it's pretty much expected that in march that they will still do exactly what you've just said that they will go back and retroactively say that the sequester didn't occur and all beach is very. you know since since the cuts are also budgeted for the four until september. it will

just take as long as it takes that the ruc should be any type of. spending decreases might not even be felt. that was our tour of the scott i think is an advocacy coordinator for the school of the americas watch. back your hearts out mensa matches coming out of the white house today as the obama administration continues to appeal to tech savvy americans with this first ever hackathon the idea behind the hackathon is to create a new petition page for the public to contact the government online the obama administration is looking for a major revamp of its we the people website which in and of itself is a first now the white house is inviting hackers to come in and redesign the website actually ceding control of the website to the people who will most often be using it this hackathon happens to coincide with the open data day and the obama administration says it hopes to attract data visual aid visualization specialists

technology and host developers to participate among other people in order to create a more user friendly science that will not only allow people to create petitions but will also allow them to track the real time progress of any response to the petitions that they put up and the legislations that could come as a result now as of now more than six million people have left some ten million signatures on the current we the people web site everything from gun control to creating a death star has come up since the website's conception we'll have to see how that plays out now on one hand the government is encouraging so-called good hacking but on the other it is attacking the cyber community the likes of which no one ministration has ever done before during the same week that this white house supported hackathon is going on attorney general eric holder released a new report that outlines the administration's strategy to deal with cyber hacks that result in the theft of trade secrets meanwhile accused kakkar germy him and is

approaching a one year marker in his trial has been sitting in jail since last march with no possibility of bail. oh and no trial the twenty seven year old is accused of helping hack the global intelligence firm known as strap for and helped steal private correspondences credit card information donor names and much much more from that web site it's from that company's database but new information about the judge is actually responsible for that is actually responsible for trying jeremy hammond has made this case all the more unusual to break down the latest developments i was joined earlier by our team web producer and you're like. development is a very very minor one in the grand scheme of things it's only going to mean that we're going to be stuck around waiting for a little bit more future mayhem was arrested march fifth of last year and has yet to be tried for. accusations with low second and honest offshoot he was hacking stratfor hacking law enforcement agencies there's

a whole laundry list of counts that he's facing and in fact the judge so that he could be sentenced for thirty five years to life for this thing but yesterday the judge who he is we just talked about her husband is somewhat connected this thing she said you know what i'm not going to step down right now even though there is this huge grassroots campaign to have me you know removed from the case with actually a press release outside the courtroom yesterday despite all these things sticking around so we don't have to wait till april which when the next round of hearings will start so let's back up just a little bit judge will read our prescott as the judge is dave she actually went into the ruling in the whole case is saying that her husband potentially was affected by the strap for hacks let's put up a. graphic to kind of visualize what she said in this ruling that was in fact tonight she said in doing so defendant hopes to draw a link between the stress for hacking and interests of cash gordon clients which purportedly would then impose a financial interest upon cash how gordon and in turn mr cavalier that's her

husband and in turn this court defendant's attempt to draw such a link is a few tiles absolutely futile that sounds a little. unfriendly and your own you know i read the whole the whole motion came out yesterday and a couple of different times she said a couple of different things that make you go really you're trying to put this motion where you're saying that you don't have any bias whatsoever but you're unleashing this verbal on not just the defendant but his attorneys and his supporters and pretty much so that people who are rallying for jeremy him and they were trying to draw these connections they were even speculative they were just just crap and even. we know we see that her husband this this cavalier fella is his name and e-mail address were leaked through the stratford dump now it wasn't his credit card information and it wasn't any monetary loss but he was still involved and it was still targeted and he has a reason to not want his name and email address circulate as part of this huge

criminal vent that is been going on for over a year now we still haven't seen any developments so right now we have had him locked up for over a year almost see where we've got bradley manning who's been without trial for over a thousand days aaron swartz committed suicide and it was. supposedly as a result of the department of jess just us going after him department of justice is also going after wiki leaks are we starting to see a trend as far as how cyber hackers are prosecuted i wouldn't say we're starting to see a trend it's been happening for months if not years just the last couple of weeks especially with aaron's passing there's been this whole kind of renewed interest in paying attention to these people who are locked up who are fighting these charges because people are starting to realize that these charges might be a little bit silly people are starting look at these counts are being filed and go that could be anyone that could be me in fact we haven't released

a letter from prison today we're sorry for this week where he attacks computer fraud and abuse act which is the legislation that they used to go after erin that they used to go after jeremy to go used to go after pretty much most hackers is that the c.f.a. . you know he was he also said the same thing that he thinks the justice department is responsible for error and stuff but maybe c.f.a. reform isn't the solution maybe we just need to abolish it we need to start all over because here is an antiquated computer law from the eighty's that they're using it it's way to a lot of people say it's way too overly broad you can pretty much stress the case if you're the government to prosecute pretty much anyone for anything involving a mouse or a keyboard and they're doing. to silence people who are sharing information that's critical the u.s. government as we see with him and as we saw with manning as we saw with with countless others being keep going in going going to go through all the different members who've been in prison and i we only have about a minute left i have to ask you because we have all these cases of prosecutions of

hackers and yet we have stuxnet we have flame we have cyber attack at the white house right so can you explain this i mean apparently what's good for the goose is not good for the gander right i mean i really think that the white house report this week was perhaps the most hypocritical thing that you have a mystery has done yet and that's saying a lot because here they are actually trying to recruit hackers to come in and make their website and even their website pretty the petition part they want to make sure that people could more more more easily petition for a death star which is fantastic but they're going to use their resources and they're going to use america's brains and minds and their ability to do that kind of stuff but at the same time going to prosecute people who are trying to expand that knowledge to others outside of the beltway while we're going to try to recruit those same people to wage or start wars in iran and in china and all that it's very hypocritical and i think people need to step back and realize that the government can't be picking and choosing what they want to do with these geniuses a very interesting dichotomy well producer as you're blake make sure you check out our website for the very latest on all of these cases

a brand new website our to dakar let us say thank you. well if you asked someone in the one nine hundred sixty use what they thought the twenty first century would look like they might have painted a picture that was similar to a jetsons cartoon episode with flying cars and robot maids well we certainly aren't there again as far as technology goes but take a look at this medical advance almost no one in the sixty's could have dreamed up the thing that the doctor is holding right now is a three d. printed ear biomedical engineers have successfully created one that is actually made of living cells and they say that it could be viable i am less than five years well are you amazed at this. new technology has opened up a whole new realm of dreams for what the future could hold for get flying cars we want to know what person from the history you with three d. print if you could so we sent laurie harshness with resident dot net out to the streets of the big apple to find out.

who would you three d. print from history this week let's talk about that when scheckter that's good he would be amazing at twitter just a bob marley life i guess first and who is second and so i come from his sort of churches i mean reported for you so in the life of your character oh yeah like super mario or there were elmo you had that oh my god it's already working my project goodbye and i like my best friends oh someone you know that's a good idea do you think that people would do that if the technology were available to start bringing back people making copies from this but you douglas. bond with

the king. and malcolm x. do you think that they would appreciate where society is today to be honest with you they would be a little disappointed abraham lincoln chaffee the classic president right that liberty says no i know and said that yes i guess lincoln is very popular right now . to do lincoln i mean lincoln's pretty hard right now you know people like lincoln maybe he him walking around his beard be good yeah top hat guy can he be like what the hell did you do with this country while i've been dead or describable the thomas jefferson i'd love to know what he was thinking when he you know put together the founding of this country and you know i know yeah well what do you make of the second amendment argument today i did think i hope it would be very sane and that you guys are totally to get out of god and i'm a big yes i think he would go this is really dangerous it's really crazy. we were

talking about something else entirely and there should be gun control and all of the background checks and everything else yeah i guess the purpose of these questions is to see you know how the past would deal with the president yes definitely what do you how do you think they would deal with that i mean how would most or deal with music sampling you know reproductions of like that that would be amazing to see what he would do he would probably lay off the auto tune you don't know i don't know maybe he would love it i mean he's you know one of the towering geniuses of her like material there's something you know like computer technology but he's a go crazy with photoshop the bottom line is three d. printing technology is developing extremely fast so let's just hope the people in control of it use it for the good of humanity.